Tammy Andries: Positive Thinking to Fight Pancreatic Cancer

After her successful recovery from a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor — the same type of pancreatic cancer as Apple's Steve Jobs — mom and volunteer Tammy Andries is focused on helping others win their cancer battles.

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At first, Tammy Andries thought her sore back was due to the stress of moving. "We were getting ready to move from Minnesota back to Wisconsin, and doing a lot of lifting, moving boxes," she says. But in 2005, she ended up going to a hospital emergency room for what turned out to be kidney stones, and was sent home with painkillers. When the pain persisted, Andries went to a different ER, this time in her hometown of Waunakee, Wisc., where she underwent a CT scan. "That's when they found an 8-centimeter mass on the head of the pancreas," she says.

In fact, 39-year-old Andries had more than just kidney stones - she had a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (also known as islet cell carcinoma), a rarer but more survivable form of pancreatic cancer that accounts for less than 5 percent of the 44,000 cases diagnosed each year. The overall average five-year survival rate is 42 percent for pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, compared with less than 4 percent for the more common form of the disease.

Perhaps the most famous pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor patient was Apple’s Steve Jobs, who was diagnosed in 2004 and lost his battle with the disease on Oct. 5, 2011.

Tammy’s Cancer Story

"I didn't really have a lot of symptoms," Andries says, apart from the back pain that had been bothering her for about two years. In fact, when she previously visited her doctor about her back troubles, she was told to do strengthening exercises to build up her muscles. But a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic, where she was sent for a second opinion after the CT scan, estimated that the large tumor had been present for about four to six years.

Andries also lacked any of the risk factors linked to pancreatic cancer - she had never been overweight and had an overall healthy diet (although she does admit that she grew up in a "meat-and-potatoes kind of family"), wasn't a smoker, and didn't drink much. She also had no family history of pancreatic cancer.

Choosing a Lifesaving Surgery

Andries's doctors determined that in addition to the large tumor on the head of the pancreas, there was also a golf-ball-sized growth on the pancreas body. Although there are now two FDA-approved drugs to treat this type of pancreatic cancer, there were no targeted medicines available at the time of her diagnosis. But she was found to be a good candidate for Whipple surgery, a complex procedure that removes the head of the pancreas along with parts of the stomach, bile duct, duodenum (the first part of the small intestine), and sometimes other surrounding tissue. It's believed that Steve Jobs also underwent this type of surgery, in addition to a liver transplant and other treatment.

For Andries, there was no question about undergoing the surgery. "When I was told I had cancer, I said: Okay, cancer's not good, let's get rid of it," she says. But she did have some concerns. "My kids were 4, 6, and 8 at the time. I thought, if I died on the operating table, would they remember me?"

But Andries says, "I was brought up in a family where you don't talk about the negatives. You get through life and you make the best out of every situation."

The surgery went well, but her recovery had its ups and downs. "I was told [recovery] would take about four to six days - I thought, okay, I'll be out in four, I'll breeze through this. It turned out to be a lot more difficult than I thought." She was in the hospital for seven days, and was “still really out of it” after a week at home. She also had to become accustomed to a new way of eating. Because part of her stomach was removed, Andries felt full after eating very little food - "almost like a gastric bypass.”

Tammy Andries: Recovery From Pancreatic Cancer

By Halloween 2005 - two months after her surgery - Andries was able to walk her children around the block to go trick-or-treating. But it wasn't until a full year after the surgery that she was back to feeling like herself. Her follow-up treatment didn't include chemotherapy or radiation, but she did visit her oncologist periodically for CT scans and blood work to check on her progress. "I had clean margins after the surgery," Andries says; now, six years later, she sees her oncologist once a year for follow-ups.

Throughout her recovery, Andries relied on her family and friends. "I had a great support system," she says. "The kids… here's someone telling them that their mom was sick, but I [didn't] look sick. I didn't know until the end of the school year that one of my daughters told her teacher that she had to be brave because her mom was in the hospital and had cancer. My mom came in and took care of the kids, then my mother-in-law came. My husband was fantastic."

Her sister, who is a nurse, also helped her wade through the information she needed: "You get so overwhelmed."

The Community That Helped Andries Cope

What also made a real difference: talking to other pancreatic cancer patients. "My sister said, 'Tammy, you really should talk to someone.' I wasn't really crying, I wasn't really expressing any real emotion, at least in front of her - only when I was alone sometimes, thinking about my kids."

The breakthrough came when Andries attended a Chicago symposium organized by the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, a non-profit organization working to advance research and support patients affected by the disease.

"Here's all these people who have been touched in some shape or form by pancreatic cancer. I was talking to this gentleman I've known less than five minutes and he said, 'So, you've had the Whipple - how's the diarrhea going for you?' Only a person who’s gone through that would know to ask that very personal question. They got it - everyone there understood it."

Andries left that symposium motivated to inspire others. "So many people I spoke to told me that their physician just told them to go home and get their affairs in order. I think I was given the slower-growing form of pancreatic cancer so I could be here six years later - to talk about pancreatic cancer, the advances that it needs to have, and the research we need in the field." In 2006, she volunteered with the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life fundraising event in Wisconsin, and in 2007 she co-founded a fundraising event, "Jazzed for Hope," for her local chapter of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

"Your priorities certainly change," Andries says. "You can't take any day for granted. As clean as I'd like my house to be, I don't make that a priority anymore because I want to spend time with the kids. You have to look at what's important in your life."

Andries's advice for other pancreatic cancer patients:

Educate yourself. "There's a lot of information out there, and it may not fit your specific diagnosis," says Andries. "[And] no one has all the answers. But if you can [learn things] that will help you make decisions, or help you with your diet, or anything to that effect, get the information that you can."

Talk about it. Whether it's to family, caregivers, or especially to other patients, Andries says, it's important to find a supportive ear. "My husband and family were wonderful, but [at that symposium] I was now around a whole new family of people who really understood what it meant to hear the words 'You have cancer.' That made a world of difference."

Stay positive. "Maybe that's my naïve state of bliss," Andries says, "but I think that if you can maintain a positive state, you heal faster and your outlook is different."

Get involved. Pancreatic cancer research accounts for less than 2 percent of the federal dollars distributed by the National Cancer Institute, according to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. "Pancreatic cancer is so underfunded," says Andries. "We need more funding, and a strategic plan in place so people are drawn to the disease to study it. If you're diagnosed, get as involved as you can and make noise - hopefully you'll be able to raise some hope for someone else going through it."

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